In the field of aeronautics it is known that the heavier an aircraft and its payload are, the larger the lift force must be to enable the aircraft to fly. It is also known that one way to increase the lift force is to increase the planform area of the wing. However, to achieve efficient flight, especially in terms of induced drag, it is generally preferred to maintain a high aspect ratio. Therefore, to increase lift and prevent efficiency losses, the span of the aircraft wings are increased.
However, the increasing span of aircraft wings causes problems when trying to load passengers directly from the terminal gate to the aircraft, and vice versa. Such problems include aircraft hitting obstacles, aircraft not being able to use adjacent gates simultaneously, and aircraft not being able to get close enough to the terminal gate for the jet bridge to reach.
To overcome problems such as these, it is known to provide folding wingtips to reduce the wing span to an acceptable distance. However, the current systems for folding wingtips occupy a large volume in the aircraft wing and require multiple redundancies and even alternative back-up systems due to their fragile nature. Failure of the folding system can result in the aircraft being prevented from leaving the runway which causes delays.